Thrice the Brinded Cat Hath Mew'd (15 page)

“You wanted to know last May's Derby winner,” Carl said. “Tell her, Mordecai?”

Mordecai's great glasses turned towards me, but he shook his head and said nothing.

“Mordecai's shy, aren't you, Mordecai? Nervous around women.”

I could have pointed out that I'm not a woman, but then I would have had to add that I am not a girl, either. It's altogether too complicated to discuss, and so I kept my mouth shut.

“Arctic Prince,” Carl said. “Wasn't it, Mordecai? Two minutes, thirty-nine and two-fifths seconds. Won it by six lengths. And do you know what?”

“No. What?” I asked.

“It was the richest running in Derby history. Twenty-eight-to-one odds. Paid off twenty-two thousand pounds.”

I let out an admiring whistle. I couldn't help it.

Had Mr. Sambridge been a winner? The only way to know for certain would be to turn in his ticket. Aside from that—

“Anything about Mr. Sambridge?” I asked. If the dead wood-carver had suddenly come into money, surely someone would have noticed a change in his habits in the past six months.

“Hold on,” Carl said. “You promised me something, remember? A deal's a deal.”

“Of course I remember,” I said. “I'm not a total imbecile, you know.” I crossed my arms and glared at him.

“Ah, don't be sore, Flavia,” he said. “I was just reminding you. Here, have a chaw.”

He held out a package of Wrigley's Spearmint chewing gum, knowing full well that there were temptations that even
I
couldn't resist.

“Take two, they're small.” He grinned, and I obeyed him—except that I took three to teach him a lesson.

Carl grinned again as I shoved the gum into my pocket.

Then he turned to Mordecai. “Refresh me,” he said.

Mordecai leaned over and whispered into Carl's ear, the words coming out of his mouth in a string of miniature puffs of steam, like a train emerging from a tunnel.

“Bought Thornfield Chase five years ago,” Carl repeated. “Paid three thousand pounds for it. Cash on the barrelhead. No trace of him before that. No military record, as far as we can see. Mordecai reckons the wood-carving's just a front—that he's actually a racketeer, dealing with dirty money, don't you, Mordecai?”

Mordecai's spectacles steamed up as he gave a frosty nod.

“Other than that, we know that he downed an occasional pint at the Goose and Garter, in East Finching. Always got a bit morose. ‘Morose'—that's Rosie the barmaid's word, not mine. But she ought to know. By the way, I suppose you know this Sambridge's dead?”

I nodded, trying not to communicate more than was absolutely necessary.

“Funny thing,” Carl said. “Just by coincidence, he died the same day you asked me to get the goods on him.”

“Hmmm,” I said, trying to sound as if I were from St. Louis, Missouri, “is that a fact?”

Carl looked at Mordecai. Mordecai looked at Carl.

“Asking questions about a dead man—or a soon-to-be-dead man—might not look so good. We're not going to be in hot water over this, are we? With the police, I mean.”

“Golly,” I said. “I hope not!”

And with that I turned, gave Gladys her head, and set off across the frozen wastes in the direction of Thornfield Chase.

The rising road to Pauper's Well was treacherous. In spite of a weak sun, the temperature was plummeting and a north wind rising. More than once, to keep from sliding backwards, I had to dismount and gain a footing in the crisp, frosty dead grass at the roadside.

I should have dressed more warmly; I admit it. Mrs. Mullet was always going on about the need to bundle up. “Never get your kidneys cold,” she would say. “Cold kidneys is killers, and I don't mean them as what's on a plate.”

I could appreciate her concern, but what would it look like to investigate a murder wearing mittens? I would simply have to make do by blowing into my closed fists one at a time.

I leaned into the wind, puffing and panting, my lungs stinging from the cold air. The turnoff to Stowe Pontefract and Thornfield Chase could not come soon enough.

When I reached it at last, I was surprised to see fresh tire marks: so fresh, in fact that the slight watery residue caused by the vehicle's passing had not yet had time to refreeze. With icy roads, I knew, most drivers going to and from Stowe Pontefract would use the much more gentle road to the east, towards Malden Fenwick. And yet, two cars, it appeared, had passed this way: one coming and one going.

No! Hold on—it was the same car. It had either arrived from the direction of Bishop's Lacey and then returned, or had gone towards the village and then come back.

Its tire tracks—identical—sometimes ran apart and sometimes together as the car was driven in and out of the ruts.

The arrival and departure must have been at about the same time, since the watery slush was of about the same consistency in both directions.

The freezing of water, I know, depends upon air temperature. Had there been more than, say, a quarter of an hour between the car's arrival and departure, the earlier tracks would have had time to freeze harder than the later.

Such was the theory, anyway. With a sharply dropping temperature, to work out the actual effect would probably take seven Oxford mathematicians, working with seven pencils, seven years.

I noted simply that a car had come and gone in rather a short space of time.

When I reached Thornfield Chase, it all became quite clear. The car had turned in at the gates, stopped, and backed out into the road, now facing in the other direction. A passenger had emerged on the offside, and a single set of footprints led away—not towards Mr. Sambridge's house, but rather to the cottage across from it.

The house with the twitching lace curtains.

T
HERE IS AN ART
to staging a convincing accident. It is not as easy as you may think—particularly on short notice. First and foremost, it must look completely natural and spontaneous. Secondly, there must be nothing comical about it, since comedy saps sympathy.

I had but a fraction of a second to think before putting my plan into effect.

As I crossed the set of footprints at the cottage gate, I lurched in my seat and let one elbow come up, apparently by accident, yanking Gladys's handlebars to one side and launching her into a vicious skid which I then tried madly to correct by applying the opposite handlebar, but it was too late. Fighting for balance, I slewed and skidded this way and that, seeming sometimes almost to gain control and then to lose it again. The result was a spectacular series of vicious fishtails, slipping and sliding from side to side on the road like a drunken skater before leaving it entirely and hurtling across the ditch to land with an alarming crash and a clatter in a holly hedge with Gladys, her wheels spinning crazily, on top of me.

I lay perfectly still while I counted to twenty. Death must appear to be a very real possibility, and if not death, then at least a serious coma.

At last I opened one eye just a crack and risked a peek. One of the curtains had been lifted and a white, shocked face was staring out at me, a hand covering its mouth, aghast.

Why was Lace Curtains not rushing outside to see if I was all right?

I needed to go into Act Two of my little drama.

While raising my head slowly and painfully, using both hands to give it a series of slow chiropractic adjustments, I was able to note that the derelict Austin at Thornfield Chase had not been moved. There were, as I suspected there would be, no footprints in the snow. Nor had the police visited this morning. The only tracks on the scene were those of the car that had dropped Lace Curtains off at the gate, and the single set of prints that led from there to the door of the cottage.

Painfully, lifting Gladys out of the way, I climbed into a kneeling position, hanging on to the holly hedge to assist me. In fact, I didn't really have to act too much: I had taken more of a battering than I expected. My hands and face were scratched by the holly and my bones felt as if they had been dumped into a sack and shaken.

Authenticity comes at a cost.

I unwound my scarf and wrapped it round my head, taking care to cover one eye. A couple of holly berries, secretly seized and crushed between thumb and finger, provided an admirable substitute for additional blood, which I smeared dramatically on the far side of my face while adjusting my makeshift bandage.

That done, I hauled myself fully to my feet, staggered across the road and up the path, and banged on the door.

I listened intently but there was not a sound from inside. No footsteps, no voice calling out for me to wait. Nothing.

I banged again, harder this time.

“Help!” I shouted.

I know it wasn't the most original thing to call out, but it was short and to the point.

I put my ear to the door and was immediately overcome with the most odd feeling. It was as if someone on the other side had their ear to the door also—no more than an inch from my own. I could almost feel the warmth—almost hear their heartbeat.

I gave the spot a good raking with my fingernails—which, thankfully, I had begun to grow again since being transported to Canada and back. The wooden grating sound so close to the ear would be sickening to the listener on the other side, as if I were gnawing through the door with my teeth.

“Help!” I pleaded, more weakly this time, vibrating my lips with a forefinger to add a bubbly quality to my voice. If my calculations were correct, it would sound as if I were suffering a bronchial hemorrhage.

And by all that is holy, it worked!

A bolt clicked, the knob turned, the door came slightly open, and an eye appeared—a flustered eye, which looked me up and down.

“Yes?” asked a voice. “What is it?”

“I fell on your ice,” I said, pointing painfully with my thumb. The “your” was a masterstroke. With just four letters and a single syllable it raised the twin specters of blame and a possible lawsuit.

The eye, now looking frightened, shifted focus to the road and back again.

“You'd better come in,” the voice said, and the door came open, but barely wide enough to allow me to squeeze inside.

The woman who stood facing me was no taller than I am, although her short hair was completely gray. She was dressed rather smartly and entirely in black: black jumper set with dainty black pearls and earrings, black skirt, black shoes, and I saw at once that what I had mistaken for fear in her eyes was, in fact, grief.

This, without doubt, was Lillian Trench, the witch—even though she didn't look like one.

I judged her to be about the same age as Cynthia Richardson, or perhaps a bit older, which made her about forty. There was something vaguely familiar about the woman, but I could not for the moment think what it was. Had she been at the recital at which Carla had sung? Or had I, perhaps, met her—or at least seen her, unlikely as it might seem—somewhere in Canada?

As I waited for Miss—or was it Mrs.?—Trench to speak, I had a quick look round before she found an opportunity to chuck me out. We were standing in rather a cramped and overheated hall: a bedraggled hanging fern, an ebony bench with coat rack, umbrella stand with two black umbrellas, a cast-iron frog which I guessed was a doorstop, and a coconut mat upon which were placed a pair of galoshes. A pair of
wet
galoshes. Ladies' galoshes.

Three doors opened off the little room, all of them presently closed.

I could hear the woman breathing.

“Are you all right?” she asked at last.

It was one of those questions to which a wrong answer could result in the loss of empires; the kind of question that comes up time and again in fairy tales.

“Are you all right?” she asked again, a little more impatiently this time.

“I—I'm not sure,” I said. “I think I need to lie down.”

It was a clever maneuver.

Had I asked to sit, she would have parked me on the seat of the hall-stand. To let me lie down, she would need to open one of the three closed doors and allow me into her inner sanctum.

She looked at me intently, making a decision. With my head still half swathed in my scarf and the backs of my hands covered with bloody scratches, I must have looked a fright.

“Very well, then,” she said, raising her voice to an unnecessary loudness. “You'd better come in.”

She paused, as if to count to three, before opening the door on the right.

We passed slowly—the woman leading me—into a small drawing room, where she walked me to a Victorian horsehair sofa. I lowered myself and began to lift my feet.

“No, wait—” she said, eyeing my wet galoshes, and reached for a newspaper.

Today's
Times,
I noted.

“Put this under your feet.”

I obeyed, peering meekly out at her from beneath my makeshift bandage.

“Let's have a look at you,” she said, reaching out to remove it. I shrank back.

“No,” I said. “I could have concussion. I'm seeing double at times.”

Thanks to my Girl Guide training, I was able to bluff convincingly when required. All those wet and windy Wednesday evenings spent in cold, drafty parish halls were paying off at last.

“Could I please have a glass of water?” I asked, then quickly: “No, sorry. I think tea would be better.”

I had no idea whether this was true or not, but it sounded plausible. Besides, tea took longer to make: With water, she'd be back too quickly.

“Hot, sweet tea may be beneficial in cases of shock,” I added, trying to give my words that condescending and slightly snotty tone that first-aid manuals have, as if I were quoting from something I had memorized.

She started for the door, then stopped. “What's your name?” she asked.

I waited for several moments, as if racking my brains for the correct answer.

“De Luce,” I said, slowly. “Flavia de Luce.”

“I thought so.”

And with that, she left the room.

There was no time to waste. I sprang to my feet and pressed an ear to the door panel.

Nothing but silence on the other side.

I made a quick survey of the room. Nothing unusual caught my eye—at least at first. I ran my fingers along the gap behind the upholstered seat of the sofa and came up with thruppence ha'penny and a chromium cigar clipper.

Aha! Gentlemen guests.

I peeled back the carpet: a prime hiding place for personal papers, as I knew from my own experience. Nothing under it but dust and grit. Lillian would win no prizes for housekeeping.

A small library housed on a couple of bookshelves contained just what you would expect to find in a cottage: Dickens, Trollope, Sir Walter Scott, Thackeray, Tennyson, Ethel Mannin, Elizabeth Goudge, E. M. Delafield, Christie, Marsh, and—I must admit my heart gave a little gazelle-like leap—
Hobbyhorse House
.

I remembered something Daffy had once told me:

“One can learn from a glance at a person's library, not what they are, but what they wish to be.”

Almost on instinct I plucked the book from the shelf and flipped it open to the title page:

“To Elsie,”
it said,
“with love and yarning.”

And it was signed, in mauve ink, by the author: Oliver Inchbald.

Elsie? Who on earth was Elsie? And what could
yarning
mean? Storytelling? Yearning? Or did Oliver Inchbald and Elsie used to knit together?

Time was running out. Lillian Trench would be back at any instant with the tea.

A quick scan of the fireplace and the hearth showed none of the witchlike implements you would expect: no cauldron hanging from an iron hook, no besom broomstick, no bundles of mandrake roots dangling at the end of a cord to dry—not so much as a trace of a black cat.

But then, I realized, a modern-day witch would work at a bank in the city. She would be a wizard at shorthand, listen to Nat King Cole on the wireless, drive a Morris Minor tourer, type up her spells on alphabetical index cards, and buy her potions—along with her Number Seven complexion milk and foundation lotion—at Boots the Chemists.

Cats, brooms, and pointed hats would be as out of fashion nowadays as whalebone corsets.

The room was disappointingly bare of clues. All that remained to search was a horrid oak sideboard: the kind of thing which would be stuffed, I knew, with Victorian sheet music, smelly Georgian chamber pots, boxes of tarnished silver cutlery, and candles and safety matches for when the lights fused.

From the kitchen came the rattle of china, signaling that tea was on the way. There was no time left for further investigation. I needed to get back to the sofa with my feet on the newspaper before Lillian Trench returned. While I was no more superstitious than the next person, I knew that snooping through the belongings of a witch might not be the healthiest of occupations.

In the seconds remaining, and in one last attempt to gather even a crumb of information, I flung open the front doors of the sideboard.

Inside, folded up like an accordion, his knees tucked up against his chin, was a person whom I took at first to be a leprechaun. A shock of white hair gave him an ageless and somehow childlike look.

His head turned slowly and he gazed out at me, his big, sad eyes made even larger by the impossibly thick glass of his spectacles.

“Ah,” he said, his voice like a ghost in a bottle. “You've found me.”

Then slowly, and wincing with pain, he unfolded himself into the room, as if he were an aviator emerging from his cramped cockpit after a record-breaking ocean flight.

I recognized him instantly, of course.

It was Hilary Inchbald…better known as Crispian Crumpet.

At one time, and perhaps still even now, the most famous boy in the world.

What do you say to someone who is as well-known as the King of England?

And then I remembered that I had actually met the King of England: his Royal Highness George the Sixth, who had turned out to be a lovely man, and not at all like his pictures. He had first thanked me for returning a rare and stolen stamp to him and then gone on to chat for much of the afternoon about potassium and, rather sadly, I thought, the ways of the wasp in winter.

As I have said—an altogether lovely man.

I was still searching for words when Lillian Trench pushed open the door with her behind and entered the drawing room carrying a tea tray.

“Ah, Hilary,” she said. “Had I known you were going to join us, I'd have brought an extra cup.”

She seemed not at all surprised to find me off the sofa.

“You've made a remarkable recovery,” she said, with an amused glance at the scarf in which half of my head and one eye was still wrapped.

Sheepishly, I unwound the thing and stuffed it into my pocket, stepping somewhat clumsily out of her way.

“Mind the Auditories,” she said, placing the tray on the table. “They're difficult to see against the pattern of the carpet, but they do tend to get underfoot, the dear silly things.”

I must have gaped at her.

“The Auditories,” she explained, pouring milk into her tea and raising an eyebrow to ask if I wanted the same. “The Listeners.”

I knew, of course, the poem by Mr. de la Mare in which a traveler knocks at the door of an abandoned house by night. Daffy had scared the blue daylights out of me by reading it aloud barely before I was out of the cradle.

“You may not believe in them,” Lillian Trench continued, “but that doesn't mean you aren't stepping on them.”

I stared hard at the carpet. Had something shifted against the pattern?

It was hard to say, but it made me feel uneasy.

Crispian Crumpet—or Hilary Inchbald, I should say—meanwhile stood quietly by.